192 
MOBY DICK; OR 
A fact thus set down in substantial history cannot easily be gainsaid. 
Nor is there any reason it should be. Of what precise species this sea- 
monster was, is not mentioned. But as he destroyed ships, as well as 
for other reasons, he must have been a whale; and I am strongly in- 
clined to think a sperm whale. And I will tell you why. For a long 
time I fancied that the sperm whale had been always unknown in the 
Mediterranean and the deep waters connected with it. Even now I am 
certain that those seas are not, and perhaps never can be, in the present 
constitution of things, a place for his habitual gregarious resort. But 
further investigations have recently proved to me, that in modern times 
there have been isolated instances of the presence of the sperm whale 
in the Mediterranean. I am told, on good authority, that on the Bar- 
bary coast, a Commodore Davis of the British Navy found the skeleton 
of a sperm whale. Now as a vessel of war readily passes through the 
Dardanelles, hence a sperm whale could, by the same route, pass out 
of the Mediterranean into the Propontis. 
In the Propontis, as far as I can learn, none of that peculiar sub- 
stance called brit is to be found, the aliment of the right whale. But 
I have every reason to believe that the food of the sperm whale — squid 
or cuttle-fish — lurks at the bottom of that sea, because large creatures, 
but by no means the largest of that sort, have been found at its 
surface. If, then, you properly put these statements together, and 
reason upon them a bit, you will clearly perceive that, according to all 
human reasoning, Procopius’s sea-monster, that for half a century stove 
the ships of a Boman Emperor, must in all probability have been a 
sperm whale. 
CHAPTEK XLV 
SURMISES 
Though, consumed with the hot fire of his purpose, Ahab in all his 
thoughts and actions ever had in view the ultimate capture of Moby 
Dick; though he seemed ready to sacrifice all mortal interests to that 
one passion ; nevertheless it may have been that he was by nature and 
long habituation far too wedded to a fiery whaleman’s ways, altogether 
to abandon the collateral prosecution of the voyage; or at least if this 
were otherwise, there were not wanting other motives much more in- 
